Stock prices fall on worries over Greece

Stock prices plummeted in Europe and stock futures were down in the US after EU ministers failed to expand a bailout fund to help Greece. Bank stock prices led the decline in Europe.

By
Angela Moon, Reuters /
September 19, 2011

View video

An employee enters the headquarters of French bank Societe Generale, the country's second largest, at La Defense, west of Paris, last month. Stocks prices of Societe Generale and other European banks fell sharply Sept. 19, 2011, on worries that Greece will default.

John Schults/Reuters/File

View photo

NEW YORK

U.S. stock index futures fell sharply Monday as renewed fears of a Greek debt default prompted investors to book some of last week's gains and turn to safer assets such as gold.

European stock indexes fell 2 percent or more in morning trade, led by banking shares, including Deutsche Bank and Societe Generale, on worries euro zone leaders won't be able to prevent a default by debt-stricken Greece.

At meetings Saturday, European Union finance ministers broke no new ground in dealing with the crisis and made no decision on whether to give more firepower to the 440 billion euro ($607 billion) bailout fund, as suggested by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.

S&P 500 futures lost 17 points and were below fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 32.25 points, and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 142 points.

Spot gold was bid at $1,820.99 a troy ounce at 1101 GMT from $1,810.73 late in New York on Friday. The precious metal hit a record high of $1,920.30 on September 6.

Swiss bank UBS increased the amount it said it lost on unauthorized equity trades to $2.3 billion Sunday and Chief Executive Oswald Gruebel said the alleged fraud would have consequences for strategy and possibly also for himself. U.S.-listed shares of UBS fell 0.9 percent to $11.77 in premarket trade.

Netflix Inc is separating its movie streaming business and its DVD-by-mail service, which will be called Qwikster, Chief Executive Reed Hastings said in a company blog post. The stock was down 1.3 percent at $153.13 in premarket trade.